As part of his continuing campaign etc., Jimmy points me to this and wrote that “it seemed a little creepy. I [Jimmy] was reminded of blinky, the 3-eyed fish from the simpsons.”
Jimmy’s one up on me. I remember the fish but didn’t know it had a name.
What I was reminded of was this story about the Siamese dandelions and the four-leaf clovers.
P.S. to Jimmy: Don’t you have a job? Who has the time to search the web for Siamese eggs??
For some bizarre reason this story featured on national radio in the UK, and was subsequently debunked in The Times by David Spiegelhalter in part of a piece on the importance of scientists being honest about uncertainty.
When I was young we lived on a farm; my parents had a hen who ALWAYS laid a double-yolker. She was named 'Calliope', after the Greek muse, because whenever she had laid an egg she would triumphantly and loudly announce the fact to the world.
Roger, the URL you posted does not work.
Roger,
The correct URL is
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnis…
Reading the comments, it's obvious that the proportion of British looneys is comparable to those on this side of the pond.
This discussion seems like up your type of discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1yv/subtext_is_not_invari…
Discussion of how axis orientation influences understanding of a graph.
Jsalvati: I agree with the statistical point, although he seems to be going a bit over the top (from my perspective) on the political angle. People make bad graphs all the time, and I agree completely that the way a graph is drawn will have implications on how it's interpreted.
haha. just skimming the google news aggregator.